Tag Archives: humor

This week I thought I would step back and offer a somewhat light-hearted summary of some of the things we have covered. Here are five simple steps for executing a simulation project.

1. Figure out what to model. You can do this by being brilliantly insightful (which you might be), or by just talking to some stakeholders. Ask them questions. How would you use this model? What are your problems? What type of solution are you looking for? Will you invest time in this? Will you make decisions based on this model? Are you going to roll your eyes and laugh out loud once I leave the room? Are you going to tell your spouse about this project over dinner this evening to demonstrate that you indeed do have a sense of humor?

2. Build something. It doesn’t have to be the world-changing model you devised in step 1, but a close enough approximation. It should do at least one useful thing from the list of game-changing things that’s on the feature-list from #1. Oh, and it should sort of work (even if requiring the assistance of some chanting, prayer and promises to recycle more).

3. (Option A) Deliver it! Get your project in the hands of users. Even if it’s incomplete and not fully validated. It is possible that everyone that sees it runs screaming in the other direction. Mothers protect their children in its presence. But, get it out there and work like heck to deal with the aftermath of the great steaming heap you’ve unleashed upon the world.

3. (Option B) Make Perfect, Wait, Deliver it! This avoids the problems with Option A because people will no longer run screaming. But, nobody cares about your project now because everyone is flying around with jet-packs on their back and 16-core processors are embedded in people’s brain as an outpatient procedure. The problem moved on and your solution (however “perfect”) is now irrelevant.

4. Present. Present. Present. The law of large numbers says that the larger the number of stakeholders exposed to the project (see Step 3a), the more people you’ll encounter with average coordination who will trip and fall when trying to run away from your solution. Some of these people will buy-in while still in a semi-dazed state. Voila! You have happy stakeholders.

5. Refine. Armed with a few active stakeholders, see what you can learn from them. What are they trying to accomplish? How do they use the model? What do they say between the screams of frustration? Figure out how to lower the pain quickly and treat them gently. During these brief spites of happiness that your stakeholders have, other stakeholders who come into contact with them think “Hey, Joe seems to be happy — even though he’s got this far-away look in his eyes, maybe this model is useful. Let me try it out…” Bing! You have another “happy” stakeholder.

And the story goes on.

For the really, really simple minded here’s the summary:Decide what to model, complete an imperfect prototype, get stakeholder buy-in, keep improving, get more stakeholder buy-in. Lather, rinse, repeat. SUCCESS!

Thanks go to Dharmesh Shah of the OnStartups blog who provided the basis for this article. For anyone who has ever been, or wanted to be, part of a startup, you might find this blog interesting and entertaining.